Does God Exist? | Prof. Alexander Pruss

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2019

⏱️ 83 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was held on March 4th, 2019 at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas. For more information about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1

Event Description:

Alexander Pruss, a mathematician and philosopher, will discuss how phenomena such as paradoxes of infinity and the elegant beauty of the laws of physics point to the existence of a cause for the universe. He will then examine whether this cause is likely to be God.

About the Speaker:

Alexander Pruss has doctorates both in philosophy and mathematics, and is currently Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University. His books include The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment (Cambridge University Press), One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics (Notre Dame University Press), and Actuality, Possibility and Worlds (Continuum). His research areas include metaphysics, philosophy of religion, Christian ethics, philosophy of mathematics and formal epistemology.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So let me start with this. It's pretty common in our current Western society to think the following two things.
0:10.8	First, that the existence of God is a matter of faith for those who believe. Second, that those things that are a matter of faith are things that cannot be
0:24.6	reasoned about. Right? So the existence of God in particular cannot be reasoned about
0:32.6	because it's a matter of faith. This is a fine argument if you accept these two assumptions that
0:39.4	it's a matter of faith and matters of faith can't be reasoned about. However, the New Testament
0:49.7	is not very friendly to this kind of reasoning.
1:00.3	The New Testament is actually very big on the idea of reason.
1:06.5	The Gospel of John, the first verses of it, could be translated as,
1:10.3	in the beginning was reason. And reason was with God, and reason was God. Now, you may not have
1:17.1	heard this translation. You may have heard it with word in place of reason. But the Greek word
1:22.9	Lagos means just as much reason as it does word.
1:28.3	God is presented as a rational being.
1:33.3	And the world that is created through the reason
1:39.3	or the Lagos is a rational world.
1:42.3	More specifically, regarding these two statements,
1:47.2	the New Testament tells us things that are contrary claims.
1:53.5	So Paul writing to the Romans,
1:56.8	and echoing ideas from the book of wisdom,
1:59.8	from around the second century BC,
2:02.5	says, ever since the creation of the world,
2:05.0	God's invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity,
2:08.6	has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.
	...

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